Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/167

Rh was no looseness or abandon about her. Everything was gripped stiff with intensity, and her effort, overcharged, closed in on itself.

She rarely varied from her swinging, forward, intense walk. Occasionally she ran with Paul down the fields. Then her eyes blazed naked in a kind of ecstasy that frightened him. But she was physically afraid. If she were getting over a stile, she gripped his hands in a little hard anguish, and began to lose her presence of mind. And he could not persuade her to jump from even a small height. Her eyes dilated, became exposed and palpitating.

“No!” she cried, half laughing in terror—“no!”

“You shall!” he cried once, and, jerking her forward, he brought her falling from the fence. But her wild “Ah!” of pain, as if she were losing consciousness, cut him. She landed on her feet safely, and afterwards had courage in this respect.

She was very much dissatisfied with her lot.

“Don’t you like being at home?” Paul asked her, surprised.

“Who would?” she answered, low and intense. “What is it? I’m all day cleaning what the boys make just as bad in five minutes. I don’t want to be at home.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I want to do something. I want a chance like anybody else. Why should I, because I’m a girl, be kept at home and not allowed to be anything? What chance have I?”

“Chance of what?”

“Of knowing anything—of learning, of doing anything. It’s not fair, because I’m a woman.”

She seemed very bitter. Paul wondered. In his own home Annie was almost glad to be a girl. She had not so much responsibility; things were lighter for her. She never wanted to be other than a girl. But Miriam almost fiercely wished she were a man. And yet she hated men at the same time.

“But it’s as well to be a woman as a man,” he said, frowning.

“Ha! Is it? Men have everything.”

“I should think women ought to be as glad to be women as men are to be men,” he answered.”

“No!” she shook her head—“no! Everything the men have.”

“But what do you want?” he asked.